1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to optical waveguides, and more particularly to nanoribbons and nanowires employed as subwavelength optical waveguides as well as optical probes, sensors, routers and other devices based on nanoribbon/wire optical waveguides. This invention also pertains generally to optical sensors which utilize the evanescent field of a single-crystalline nanoribbon waveguide.
2. Description of Related Art
Chemically synthesized nanowires represent a unique class of building blocks for the construction of nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. Since nanowire synthesis and device assembly are typically separate processes, nanowires permit more flexibility in the heterogeneous integration of different materials than standard silicon technology allows, although the assembly itself remains a major challenge. The toolbox of nanowire device elements is growing and currently includes various types of transistors, light emitting diodes, lasers, and photodetectors. While the electrical integration of simple nanowire circuits using lithography has been demonstrated, optical integration, which promises higher speeds and greater device versatility, remains unexplored.
Photonics, the optical analogue of electronics, shares the logic of miniaturization that drives research in semiconductor and communications technology. The ability to manipulate pulses of light within sub-micron spaces is vital for highly integrated light-based devices, such as optical computers, to be realized. Recent advances in using photonic bandgap and plasmonic phenomena to control the flow of light are impressive in this regard. However, both of these approaches typically rely on difficult and costly lithographic processes for device fabrication and are in early stages of understanding and development.
Compact, reusable chemical sensors are highly desirable for on-site detection in the field, including the identification of water contaminants, hazardous biochemical compounds or blood-serum content. Ideally, a sensing platform should be portable and employ several complementary sensing modalities that allow quantitative chemical identification of extremely small sample volumes. Optical spectroscopy is a powerful analytical tool for characterizing biological and chemical systems, but making a standard optical laboratory portable is a major challenge. However, with recent advances in the synthesis and assembly of nanomaterials, it is timely to begin integrating these materials into functional device architectures for sensing and monitoring. Of the well-studied inorganic nanostructures, chemically synthesized one-dimensional (1D) semiconductors have gained significant interest from the photonics community as passive and active components for miniaturized spectroscopic devices. This is due in part to their ability to guide a significant portion of the confined electromagnetic energy outside the cavity (i.e., in the evanescent field) while operating below the diffraction limit of light. Since the evanescent field travels efficiently through fluidic and air dielectrics, it is possible to integrate the waveguides into microfluidic devices and sense molecules located near the surface of the cavity.
One-dimensional semiconductor nanomaterials offer unique advantages over their zero- and two-dimensional counterparts because their geometric shapes allow them to capture and guide light over long distances. Trapping light in volumes smaller than the wavelength of light is essential to the miniaturization of optical characterization techniques. Materials currently being studied for this purpose include photonic crystals, high-index solids, and metal surfaces. However, engineering versatile, reusable optical devices from materials such as photonic crystals and metallic nanostructures remains challenging due to the difficulty in performing spectroscopy with the guided optical energy. In addition, the synthetic steps for producing these materials tend to be labor-intensive and involve costly lithographic techniques.
Fiber-based detection is a unique alternative to free-space sensing because it localizes chemical recognition at the surface of a waveguide. Among the most popular sensing schemes that rely on the evanescent field of a fiber are absorption and fluorescence. Typically these set-ups involve multimode silica fibers with diameters much larger than the free-space wavelength of light. The evanescent field in these experiments has been used to measure refractive indices of liquids, monitor volatile compounds in water and detect shifts in localized surface plasmon resonances of coupled metal colloids. Recently, it has been proposed to use subwavelength silica fibers in a Mach-Zehnder type interferometer to detect index changes caused by molecules interacting with the surface of the fibers. Though these various sensing configuration are promising for high sensitivity, fast cycling times and reversibility, they do not provide versatility in their spectroscopic detection or enable a chemical read-out of the analyte. To move beyond fiber sensors that operate solely as on/off detectors it is vital to develop materials that can sustain multiple analytical modes for chemical identification.